New Additions
10:12 a.m. - 2007-03-21


We have a two new family members. My nephew is the father of a new baby girl, but they live way out East so I won't be seeing her much at all. The other new family member is my new washing machine. My old machine was on its way out, according to the ace repairman who has resuscitated the poor old thing several times in past years. Now it is gone from my garage forever and replaced by a new one with big load capacity. I am running the first ever load even as I type this.

This last week has been taken up with the usual household dreck, and with practice on my camera. Being a complete novice at photography, it is fun to try the different settings and see if it works. I also had to figure out tech things like loading pictures on the knitting blog and trying not to tear my hair out when things did not work. Right now I am 'in the groove' and have managed to get about 10 entries with pictures on the new site. All this new stuff keeps the mind sharp, so they say.

I am still working along on the new afghan and have at present finished about 20 squares. Since I need 120, this is a drop in the bucket, but I figure that I need to finish one or two a day, and I will be done in the summer sometime. I was worried about the acid green yarn that I have in the center of each square, but yesterday I found another ball, so I should have plenty.

Now starts a busy time of year, when I have to start the seeds and garden, and sew some shirts for Melissa and myself. Melissa wants some tunic shirts, and I think it will be fun to do machine embroidery around the necklines and sleeves. I am trying to get a sewing blog started but so far only have about two entries, mainly because I haven't started sewing anything yet.

We had the EG's over for Sunday dinner. I called Grandpa and invited them, and told him he had a choice between corned beef and cabbage or shrimp salad. They chose the shrimp, so I got myself to the Costco and bought a big bag of frozen shrimp. I have never cooked frozen shrimp before, and have only cooked fresh shrimp once in my life (in Texas at the Galvaston vacation house we rented a few years ago). I looked up various information on brining shrimp, but eventually went with Alton Brown, who seems to know his stuff. I brined the frozen shrimp to thaw them out, then used a steaming method from The Perfect Recipe by Pamela Anderson. To make the salads, I put lettuce in a big bowl for each person, put a big mound of the cold cooked shrimp in the center, then surrounded it with wedged hard cooked eggs, cucumber slices, radish slices, and black olves. I had some cherry tomatoes to put on too, but I forgot them. I made a Louis dressing. I was so tired of cooking and peeling and testing the doneness of shrimp by that time, that I used the extra eggs to make an egg salad sandwich for myself, but that only meant extra shrimp for those who love them. The EG's really liked the salads and not a single shrimp was left over, which is great, because Grandpa's appetite has been down lately, so it was good to see him chow down.

Time to go out to the garage and see if the new washer did its job.